Speed Camera News Roundup

But there’s been a decent number of articles and stories on the subject that our diligent and hardworking editors want to bring to our loyal reader’s attention.

Trib FOIA Stuff

First up is the Chicago Tribune’s self-aggrandizing Freedom of Information story. For months, the Trib has been trying to get its hands on documents related to the speed camera law and reporting every chance they could about the denial of their FOIA requests. They wanted to know what went into the decision making process for spearheading the speed camera law.

Not surprisingly, the newspaper was skeptical about the basis for the city’s safety claims to rationalize speed camera enforcement.

Essentially, the concept is having a radar gun hooked up to a large digital readout above a speed limit sign. When a car passes, the digital readout, which is labeled “Your Speed” flashes the speed the car is going.

The idea was conceived in Garden Grove, CA when the city was having problems convincing drivers to obey the speed limit and stop running over pedestrians, bike riders and the like.

Guess what?

Because the concept informed drivers in real time about their speed, drivers began to slow down and comply with the law.

Goetz theorizes this idea will work better at convincing drivers to follow the speed limit than speed cameras. That’s because dynamic speed displays give the driver feedback info immediately as opposed to speed cameras which will inform misbehaving drivers several weeks after the fact.

Chicago was the first city to harness the revenue generating power of red light cameras back in 2003. Once other greedy municipalities saw the tens of millions of dollars the Windy City was taking in, it was only a matter of time before Illinois state law changed to let dozens of other cities to jump into the red light camera game.

Now that Gov. Quinn gave Mayor Emanuel the chance to start up another money generating monster, many drivers and reporters outside Chicago are asking when the speed cameras coming to torment their towns.

5 Responses to Speed Camera News Roundup

Hmmm, lets see here. I never trusted Rahm, I don’t trust Quinn, and I trust very few aldermen. We’re just overwhelmed with honest politicians in Illinois and in Chicago. Ah, our tax money well spent. NOT!!!!!!!!

There is still some work to do on it, such as adding the extensions of the buffer “to the farthest side of the next intersection”. I hope to be able to do that in the coming day or two.

But, I did notice one thing with this approximation of the buffer zones. The list of RLC eligible for conversion to ASE appears low. My guess is their count was only those lights directly within the buffer zone.

One shining example of this is the intersection of Western and Peterson mentioned in the article here. It should already be eligible for conversion based on it’s proximity to Korczak Park @ 6156 N Claremont Ave. While Western and Peterson is almost a quarter mile from the park, the 1/8th mile buffer crosses Western just south of Greenlake Ave. The next intersection of Western to the south is Peterson.

If I had to make a quick estimate based on glancing at the map, I would say that between 2/3 and 3/4 of existing RLC will be eligible for conversion. And whether or not the City wants to admit it; the administrator of the program will push for conversion of every eligible intersection not just the ones the city has listed.

My guess is that speed cameras will be located outside of the areas that the law actually permits. The city won’t care; as they know nobody will stop them. And eventually tickets will be given for 1 MPH over the limit.